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A marketer is of no use if nobody needs your product. This developer was lucky that he built something that people wanted. He just failed to reach them. He coul
by laserlight 5y ago
A marketer is of no use if nobody needs your product. This developer was lucky that he built something that people wanted. He just failed to reach them. He could have just hired a marketer with right incentives. No need for a co-founder in marketing. You need to talk to customers, which is not optional.
- dkersten 5y agoYeah, in my personal experience, the biggest problem in very early stage startups has always been figuring out what the right thing to build is, and actually building a version of it that people can use. Customer development and product development. If you build the wrong thing or you never actually get the thing built, any marketing effort is wasted effort. Nail those things first, then hire someone to do your marketing.
- b20000 5y agomost products are things you don't need. look at facebook, you don't need that shit, yet you use it, and you want it. i would say that 80% of SV startups make things you don't need. they just think you need it, and throw a bunch of money at it to satisfy some ego or lifelong dream. a lot of things in life are things you want but not need. so the money is in making things people want, not need.
- _benj 5y agoThis might the the case in B2C but wren in B2B a startup can make a product that paid for itself, say, improves a process or removes frictions or automated something or any other business needs that are tedious… that is a gold mine! Been looking but haven’t found my gold mine yet…
- laserlight 5y agoThanks for your clarification. First sentence should have read: A marketer is of no use if nobody wants your product.
- mettamage 5y agoAmen. Glad to think I'm not the only one thinking this way. Seeing this comment, blockchain startups make a lot more sense :)
- blocked_again 5y ago> A marketer is of no use if nobody needs your product That's the point of marketing. To mostly convince people to buy products that they don't need.
- laserlight 5y agoUsing need and want interchangeably was a mistake. First sentence should have read: A marketer is of no use if nobody _wants_ your product.
- holler 5y agoI agree with that, and it depends on what you're building, but just having a second person to offload/distribute the marketing/growth work could be significant.
- laserlight 5y agoThere is no marketing or growth work until product-market fit. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to find a marketer as a cofounder. There could of course be a cofounder who is more focused on customer or business development.